D&D Fight Night Part 3

I am getting ready for another fight night with my players tonight (our regular sessions are on Wednesday). Last time I ran them through some pretty basic encounters that were generated with the help of Kobold Fight Club. It’s a great resource for Dungeon Masters if you haven’t heard of it. The ability to include both The Tome of Beasts and the Creature Codex as libraries is a massive boon to anyone who wants to use these supplements at their table.

The encounters last time were simple and straight forward just heroes vs. monsters in a plain battlefield. Most of my players are visually oriented so I find maps helps them to have actual details in front of them. For tonight, I have spent a lot more time planning my encounters.

If you are curious here is what my players fought against:

Encounter 1: 2 Half Ogres, 4 Hobgoblins

Encounter 2: 4 Goblins, 2 Ice Mephits

Encounter 3: 2 Ghasts, 1 Spectre

Each of these encounters provided different challenges and tests for my players. One of the fun things for me as a Dungeon Master is to challenge such a large party. Sometimes I craft specific encounters like Encounter 3 for specific players in mind such as Valoreon or Olpheron. Since we are doing Fight Night, its important they get to test out class specific abilities, but it also gives them a time to shine. It’s just more fun.

Listening to the test audio recordings in D&D Fight Night Pt 2 I definitely recognize how switching mediums and including the audience will affect how we play D&D. From simple stage directions such as the Dungeon Master is always North to how we setup and run initiative – it was apparent to me that changes needed to be made.

We will be running what I consider full encounters tonight with as much attention paid to them as I would to creating an building a standard campaign encounter. I’ve prepped three encounters for tonight with some additional flair. I’ve prepped all my encounters for things like initiative, monster cards, tokens, and maps. I will be using some of the creatures from the Tomb of Beasts as well as the Creature Codex tonight to give them heaping amounts of Midgard flavor.

As an added bonus we will also be changing things up from a recording perspective trying to figure out the best use of equipment etc.